Startup builds intrusion prevention system for home networks

The company needs to produce a minimum 800 initial devices to reduce production costs and reach its desired price point. To raise the necessary funds the company has launched a Kickstarter campaign that gives backers the opportunity to buy the device for $149 or less.

Though iGuardian falls in the price range of high-end SOHO routers, its creators believe there will be demand for it and that the market for consumer-grade IPS devices will only grow in the coming years. The device offers a level of protection against modern threats that antivirus products and routers don't currently provide, they said.

In fact, many home routers have vulnerabilities themselves and the number of attacks against them has increased considerably over the past twelve months.

In March, researchers found hundreds of thousands of home routers that had been compromised and had their DNS settings hijacked by attackers. In Poland a similar attack was used to hijack online banking connections. Also this year, researchers found a worm that infected Linksys routers, and attacks that installed cryptocurrency mining malware on network-attached storage systems.

Past security reviews of popular SOHO routers found many vulnerabilities and a router hacking contest at DefCon that was sponsored by Itus Networks resulted in 15 new flaws being reported.